Harry Potter grows up in latest instalment

The West Australian

Wednesday, 15 July 2009 10:51PM

Whatever remaining pretence that Harry Potter is made for children is swept away in the latest instalment of the blockbuster series as the teen wizard and his fellow Hogwarts students deal with their blossoming sexuality, betrayal and mortality.

From the beginning the Harry Potter producers envisioned the series growing with its audience, with each successive episode not just dealing with more mature material but evolving stylistically.

In the Half-Blood Prince, with director David Yates returning after his fine Order of the Phoenix we now have a fully wrought grown-up drama - a dazzlingly well-made fantasy with its feet firmly in reality.

Starting out with Harry chatting up a gorgeous girl in a grimy London Underground tea room, Yates has pared away the fairytale feel of the previous films, giving it a gritty, wintry ambience appropriate to the coming clash between Harry and Voldemort.

In fact, there's so much plotting in shadowy corridors, with Harry trying to find out the secret of the Dark Lord's immortality, that Hogwarts starts to feel like Hamlet's Elsinore.

Not that The Half-Blood Prince is without humour. Even with the storm clouds gathering, Yates and writer Steve Kloves have delivered arguably the funniest Potter movie yet and the certainly the most fixated on romance.

For long stretches of this sedate Potter edition, fans of magic and special effects will be disappointed. Instead, we get Harry, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger swept up in arcane romantic manoeuvring worthy of Jane Austen.

It also feels too much like a bridging episode to be a wonderful experience in its own right.

But hardcore Harry Potter fans will appreciate the filmmakers treating with respect the mythology, if not giving them the myriad of details, and astutely setting the scene for the marvellous conclusion to come.